The effect of ceria nanoparticles on the breakdown strength of transformer oil

Nanotechnologies have potential to be used in transformer industry in enhancing material properties which may lead to a compact design of transformer and reduced manufacturing cost. Effect of adding different nanoparticles such as titania, silica, nano-diamond, etc. has been studied in literatures. In this paper, nano-ceria particles have been successfully added into transformer mineral oil with different content. The suspension is very stable and no segmentation can be observed over several months. The ceria nanoparticles are commercially available, which have a quite narrow size distribution. UV-Vis, TGA and FT-IR are used to characterize the ceria nanofluids. The water content of the ceria nanofluids has been measured by Karl Fisher titration, which is important for the breakdown strength of transformer oil. AC voltage breakdown and lightning impulse voltage breakdown measurements have been performed on the ceria nanofluids. An enhancement of 15% on AC breakdown voltage has been observed on ceria nanofluids with some content compared to reference transformer oil. On the other hand, no clear difference on the lightning impulse breakdown voltage is observed between the ceria nanofluids and reference transformer oil.